Tuff City Records (Part 3): Aaron bites back

The 3rd part of our Tuff City week was going to be a downloadable gallery of all the great stuff we photographed behind the scenes at Tuff City – hi-res original Spoonie Gee press releases and all (actually, we own those, but Tuff City showed us stuff we’d never dreamed of) – that’s still coming, don’t worry. But for now, plucked straight from our comments section, here’s Aaron Fuchs’ reaction to some of the battering he’s been taking from readers, and from blog reactions to our interview…

“Dear guys. Thanks so much for the positive press, it is especially valuable to me in combatting some of the lies that have been circulating the net – like that I bought the rights to samples so I could sue people (begun some years ago by a doofus internet scribe, San Francisco’s Davy D). Here’s how it really went down. Back in the day, when Marley had a makeshift studio in his sister’s apartment in Queensbridge, I’d trade him records and cash in exchange for tracks .One of the exchanges of note was the 45 to ‘Impeach’ I gave him which immediately resulted in Marley’s production of MC Shan’s ‘The Bridge’. I took not another dime nor a piece of the copyright for it, which would have been industry standard. Marley in turn laid down the great track for Spoonie’s ‘Take it Off’. A couple of years later, however, I brought a remix project to Marley; the multitrack to ‘Impeach’ , over which I had dubbed a new Spoonie Gee vocal ‘You Aint just a fool, You’s an Old Fool’ (astute listeners to that 12″ will hear the ‘Impeach’ track with at least 30 seconds more music and a new break beat)but this time the remix didn’t work out and Marley, without authorization, stripped the drum track from the multitrack and built on it the track to LL Cool J’s ‘Around the Way Girl’. Friendly communication from Tuff City to Def Jam and Columbia about this copyright violation were ignored. At this point, I’m sure even haters would agree that it would have been insane for a rational businessperson not to sue. But even then Tuff City remained dj-friendly; Marley was not named in the suit and was not liable for a dime. Finally, as to the liar shysty mcshysterson’s assertions about my relationship to the music and the musicians, I proudly point to my 25 year relationship with Spoonie Gee. If he can do better he’s welcome to try; Spoonie and I have been operating only with a handshake for all that time.”